I’ve been hunting from the ground most of my adult life. Like most hunters in Louisiana, my father put me in a ladder stand made of 2-by-4s and plywood at a young age, and from this perch I learned how to watch squirrels, birds and the occasional deer without the fear of being seen.

I think the first time I fished with Capt. Tim “Hook” Ursin Jr. was back in the early to mid-1990s. At the time he was running his charter service out of the End of the World Marina on Delacroix Island — and we were both a lot younger then.